Back in the days (not so long ago) when I ran XP, we would use Excel 97 for spreadsheets. Once it started getting a bit long in the tooth, I tried to encourage the Wife to use Open Office. She could never get on with it, mainly due to the mappings of the keyboard shortcuts. Despite suggesting we change the mappings, she still came up with a few other problems with it.
So once I changed our PC to Ubuntu, she was more or less forced to use Open Office all the time. A few other problems came up, notably setting print areas. As my Wife is the main user of Spreadsheets in our house, I was forced to put up with her complaints - I often suggested she boot back into XP (as the machine is dual boot) if it was that big a problem, but she seemed to persevere.
Recently I read a few good comments regarding the 'other' Gnome spreadsheet, Gnumeric, on the Ubuntu forums. I thought I would give it a try. As with most other apps on Linux, it is free and easy to install, and a quick visit to the Add/Remove Applications menu had the application installed and running in under a minute.
Although it has only been a short while, early signs are promising. Much to my Wife's delight, the shortcut key mappings are the same as Excel (at least the ones she uses are), and the set print area feature is much better implemented.
I don't want this to sound like an Open Office bashing post, as I generally like it. I especially like the export to PDF feature. It is just that the major bug bear my other half had after changing to Ubuntu seems to have disappeared under Gnumeric. Hurrah!
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